Cathay Pacific reported lower traffic figures in February for both passengers carried and the amount of cargo it transported due to the unprecedented challenge brought by the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

The Hong Kong-based airline said, together with subsidiary Cathay Dragon, it carried a total of 118,711 tonnes of cargo and mail last month – a decrease of 6.9% compared to the same month last year. The cargo and mail load factor increased by 5.8 percentage points to 66.6%, while capacity, measured in available freight tonne kilometres (AFTKs), was down by 15.1%.

“We are facing an unprecedented challenge as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause widespread disruption to our operation and business,” said Ronald Lam, Cathay Pacific Group chief customer and commercial officer, adding that just in February, the airline made a significant unaudited loss of more than HK$2  billion at the full-service airline level.

Flexibility in operating additional freighters

The airline said the situation further deteriorated in February as more governments worldwide have introduced more travel restrictions, with the most recent ones starting to affect our major long-haul markets including Europe, the United States and Southwest Pacific. 

“The prolonged Chinese New Year holiday together with efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak in early February led to a delay in the resumption of production in mainland China. Demand for outbound airfreight from the mainland and Hong Kong only began to recover progressively from mid-February,” Cathay said in a statement.

In contrast, it noted that there was an overflow of demand for cargo services into mainland China and Hong Kong partly due to significant capacity cutbacks and a surge of pharmaceutical-related orders.

“While our freighter capacity remains intact, the reduction of our passenger flights has had a significant impact on our overall cargo capacity as well as our ability to carry cargo to destinations only served by our passenger flights,” Lam said, noting however that Cathay remains flexible in deploying additional cargo capacity, including mounting additional freighter flights as well as cargo-only passenger flights.

2020 cargo outlook

“The scale of the challenge we are currently facing is unprecedented and no one can predict when conditions will improve. Our advance passenger bookings show no clear signs of recovery at this stage, and the gap in bookings compared to 2019 continues to widen,” the airline said.

“We already made it known last week that a substantial loss in the first half of this year is expected,” the statement further noted, while assuring that Cathay Pacific is a resilient company and there is confidence in the future of the company.